Body dysmorphia used to be a secret shame. Now male influencers are using it to get rich

April 14, 2026 — 5:00pm

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If you’re relatively new to social media (that is, a teenager), you could be forgiven for thinking that this is how it always was. That people treating their bodies as major renovation projects that can be hacked and optimised and commercialised down to a cellular level was the way the human race has always existed.

But if you’re older than that and remember the before times, you know that something has at some point shifted substantially.

That’s why, depending on what specific strand of content the algorithm feeds you, it’s easy to see the looksmaxxing trend – where young men aspire to improve their physical appearance by any means necessary – as simply the latest version of self-optimisation. Sure, it’s extremely niche and a little weird, but it only exists within a tiny pocket of the internet and there has always been body extremism online.

On the other hand, though, the rules of engagement have radically changed from the early days of the world wide web and social media’s infancy. Back then, the unspoken agreement was tacitly understood by everybody involved in unhealthy online behaviour: the conversations about how to best starve yourself or keep concerned parents at bay took place on anonymous forums and on Tumblr threads, and in person you had to participate in a kind of mass gaslighting to pretend you weren’t doing anything.

Under the new world order, though,........

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